Stories by Marc Ferranti

The Great Recession cast a shadow on all sectors of the economy in 2009. IT fared better than most, however, and the slump did not curb the dynamic nature of the industry. Acquisitions among big vendors continued to reshape the market, operating-system wars extended to mobile battlefields, microblogging became a powerful source of real-time information, and the take-up of small, 'Net-connected devices was stronger than ever. Here, in no particular order, is the IDG News Service's pick of the top 10 technology stories of 2009.

In a tumultuous week on the market, the attention of IT investors was captured by a mixed bag of acquisition activity and earnings news from the hardware and chip arena -- a sector that is supposed to help lead tech out of the recession.

Good news about the economy along with upbeat statements from industry leaders and market researchers are helping to instill confidence in the tech sector after a rollercoaster ride on U.S. exchanges over the past few weeks.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage in New York Thursday, playing the role of chief salesman in a day of worldwide launch events, executive speechmaking and sales promotions meant to persuade consumers and businesses to migrate to Windows 7.

With quarterly IT sales results pouring in, vendors including IBM, Google, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel appear more confident than ever that the global recession's depressing effects on the tech market are lifting.

Despite Google's phenomenal growth, the Internet search giant does not appear to be worried about taking on too many projects, judging from comments made at a media roundtable Wednesday with company cofounder Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt.

Sweden's LM Ericsson has won the bidding war over the wireless assets of Nortel Networks, agreeing to pay US$1.13 billion for the financially beleaguered Canadian company's CDMA business and LTE Access technology.

Comcast.net e-mail went down for potentially millions of subscribers the better part of the day Saturday as users and observers got running commentary on the service provider's efforts to manage the situation via Twitter updates from Frank Eliason, the company's director of Digital Care.

Some positive macroeconomic news, Oracle's plan to pay out a dividend, and mergers and acquisition news from Cisco, IBM and Sun this week stoked hopes for a sustained recovery in tech vendor shares even though companies like Palm, Nokia and Sony continue to brace for a poor sales outlook for the remainder of the year.

A compromise on the U.S. stimulus package, an upbeat subscriber forecast from Research In Motion and news of a big investment plan by Intel this week did little to cheer IT investors about prospects for the tech sector, as vendors and analysts continue to curb expectations for sales.

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